Observations/Feedback requested ref MAC changing whether native or RTSP V2 Cam's & other issues

So I’ve had 2 V2 cams (not the pans) for a few months now and have played with production and beta firmware/apps through this period and recently installed the RTSP firmware.

FYI - observations were made using the Wyze app as well as vcl and tinyapp. Also, after a camera is up and working I block their mac addresses (see list item #1) in my router. Each of the camera mac addresses is assigned to a static ip address. Also, in rtsp with tinyap I have them set to generic camera and rtsp over udp. I do not have SD cards in the cameras and have event detection turned off.

Some things that I’ve noted that apply to both the native firmware and the rtsp versions with regard to mac addresses are as follows:

  1. the mac addresses alternate between 2C:AA:8E:xx:xx:xx and B2:BE:xx:xx:xx:xx on both cameras.

  2. if the mac address switches then in the native firmware I need to unblock the addresses for a short period of time so that the camera can access the internet and then I can block them again. the interval that this occurs seems random as it can range from 1 day to as long as a few weeks at a time; any insight would be helpful

  3. if the mac address switches in the rtsp firmware all I need to do is alternate to that one (ie it has a different ip) in vcl or tinyap. In the Wyze app I can just access the camera - when I look at the settings in the app it will show me which mac address is currently assigned.

  4. in rtsp it appears that the signal is lost/frames dropped more often than with the native firmware. this appears to be the case whether using the wyze app, vcl or tinyapp. To reduce this from happening due to any bandwidth issues I have set the resolution to 360p which helps a little.

If I can find a solution to the cameras switching mac addresses as well as the lost signal/dropped frames then I will be able to fully implement these 2 cameras and add more to a desired nvr type of system.

Any insight, suggestions, random ideas are most welcome.

Thanks in advance!

See this:

I’ll give that a shot and monitor it to see if it “holds”…although I’m fairly certain that I’ve power cycled more than twice during my various tests.

I’ve seen some similar behavior with the MAC address on one of my 2 V2s but dismissed it as me not keeping up with what it was before/after flashing for RTSP.

I use Google WiFi which has an administrative view that shows what the MAC is now and what it was up to 30 days in the past. I’ll have to keep an eye on this.

Quick updates:

After a couple of more power cycles the cams have maintained their mac addresses for the past 3 days so that is looking good.

To achieve better video/fewer drops (at least using TinyCam on a Fire 7 tablet) I went to 360p and also switched to RTSP over TCP. Going over TCP has reduced the drop rate quite a bit.

I can now record on my fire 7 tablet both cameras continuously (well so far at least the last 1,600 minutes per camera or so) without a blip.

So, after about 3 weeks of working great (rtsp over tcp, no internet connection) the mac addresses reverted again on both of my cameras, It took 2 full (unplugging, resetting via their app doesn’t do it) power cycles the correct mac addresses came back. Argh!!!

Anyone know/tried doing port forwarding (rtsp/tcp) to handle this possible case? It’s the next step I’m going to try so that I can avoid power cycling.

Hi nowheelstoday, just linking this topic with another similar with a Wyze response: